Polylingual
by alcimines
Summary: In the earliest days of the second X-Men team, Logan and Ororo discover something interesting about each other


_The dialog in this story's introductory scene, where the X-Men learn about Logan's ability to read Japanese, is almost verbatim from "The Uncanny X-Men", volume 1, issue #118. It was the original reveal that Logan had an until-then unknown connection to Japan._

_Our story picks up with the X-Men - lost and presumed dead by Professor X - arriving back to civilization after being imprisoned in the Savage Land by Magneto._

POLYLINGUAL

The sky was dark with smoke and the sun was a pale, shrouded, disk. Ashes were drifting everywhere, like dark-grey snow.

The X-Men were in Japan - only a few hours after being put ashore by a freighter. And now they were staring in shock at a city ablaze. The smoldering and flame-shot skyline of the city center was oddly askew, rocked and damaged by the earthquake that had triggered the fire.

Scott was coughing, but Ororo was providing him with a draft of fresh air to help clear the smoke from his lungs. Peter was sitting on a park bench, thoughtfully considering the hellish scene before them. Logan, Kurt, and Sean were clustered behind the others, watching the catastrophe as they talked quietly among themselves.

"This may sound macabre," Sean said slowly. "But I can't help wonderin' what happened to the people. This is a big city, but it looks almost deserted."

The X-Men had helped as best the could as they worked their way from the docks to a park on the far side of town. They'd expected the streets to be crowded with refugees in need of help, but there was only a few people to be seen, and they were mostly firefighters and other emergency personnel.

Scott was still coughing as Logan snagged a fluttering piece of paper out of mid-air. It was a torn fragment of newspaper. Logan's eyes narrowed as he read it.

"Paper stays most everyone was evacuated," Logan announced.

"What-?!" Scott rasped out. "Why?"

"Early warnin' of a big 'quake," Logan answered as he continued to peer at the newspaper.

Scott considered that for a few seconds. "That doesn't make sense."

Logan shrugged his shoulders and negligently waved the torn scrap before letting the wind take it away. "Look, bub, all I know is what I read in the newspapers."

Scott gave Logan a long look.

"You can read Japanese?" Scott asked eventually.

"Yup."

"I... didn't know," Scott asked, trying to keep the exasperation he was feeling out of his still-ragged voice.

Logan just shrugged again. "You never asked."

* * *

It was a few weeks after the X-Men's stay in Japan. They eventually worked their way back to America - and to a very relieved Professor X. Now they were back on the job. In fact, they were on their first mission since their long and unplanned absence.

Paris was in turmoil. There was the constant racket of two-tone sirens as crowds of agitated people wandered the streets. It looked like a riot might be brewing.

Logan nodded to the pretty gendarmette he'd been talking with and drifted back to the rest of the team.

* * *

The X-Men were in civilian clothes, trying to keep a lower profile than usual. A young mutant had manifested his powers in the middle of Paris. There'd been damage and injuries, but nobody had been killed - yet. The X-Men were hoping to find and extract the boy before there was a lethal misunderstanding with either the French authorities or a wandering mob of angry citizens.

"They don't have the kid," Logan informed Scott.

Scott studied Logan expressionlessly.

"I guess I also didn't ask if you could speak French," Scott said flatly.

Logan just shrugged.

Ororo was standing off to one side with her arms crossed over her breasts. She let out a tired-sounding sigh. She was becoming increasingly sick of Scott and Logan's constant rivalry.

Scott took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He knew Logan was baiting him, but he refused to be drawn out. Instead, he just lifted a communicator to his ear and went back to talking with Professor X.

"So how do you happen to know French?" Sean asked interestedly.

"Lotta Canadians speak French," Logan replied briefly. "The folks from Quebec kinda insist."

Kurt gave Logan a long and curious look. Then he off-handedly said something in German.

Logan shook his head. "Nah, the cops ain't mad. Just scared. O'course, scared people can be more dangerous than pissed-off people."

Kurt nodded. Then he exchanged a look with Peter and inclined his head towards Logan.

The big Russian grinned and added something of his own to the conversation.

Logan smiled. "If you're hungry, Paris is the place to be. After we find the kid, maybe Scott will let us try a place I know that isn't in the tourist books. It has pretty good food."

Sean shot a few exploratory words towards Logan.

Definitely amused, Logan shook his head. "Sorry, Irish. All I can do with Gaelic is order a drink and tell a girl that she's pretty."

Sean laughed and shook his head. "Some might say that's all you need."

* * *

They were on their way back home. The Blackbird was at forty-thousand feet, rumbling its way across the Atlantic.

Scott was piloting the Blackbird. Kurt was in the co-pilot's chair, picking up a few more hours of flight-time as he worked on getting his pilot's rating. Learning to fly was one of the few things that Kurt seemed to take seriously.

Peter was in the back, dozing peacefully. As the youngest of the X-Men, he had the enviable ability to catch a few winks whenever he had nothing else to do.

As usual, Sean had his nose in a book. Logan had long ago noticed that for a guy who liked to play at being little more than a boozy ex-cop, the Irishman had a literary streak.

The Parisian boy - dead tired after days on the run - was asleep in one of the passenger chairs. Ororo was sitting next to the boy, keeping an eye on him. Uncontrolled use of poorly understood powers while you were in an aircraft was a deeply undesirable thing.

For his part, Logan was keeping an appreciative eye on Ororo's slim body. That was one of his favorite leisure-time activities since he'd joined the X-Men. Or at least, it was when Jean wasn't around.

And lately, it helped him keep his mind off of a lady named Mariko.

Ororo glanced up, making eye-contact with Logan. She gave him a skeptical look and then said something.

Logan smiled at Ororo and responded in the language she'd just used. "You can't blame a man for looking. 'Sides... I know nothing will come of it. I get the fact you don't like me. Most folks don't."

Ororo looked surprised. "Your Kikuyu is passable, but you have a dreadful accent," Ororo said in English. "Where did you learn to speak it?"

That made Logan pause. For a long moment, he stared off at nothing in particular.

"I'm not sure," he finally admitted.

Ororo frowned at Logan - and said something in another tongue.

"Arabic," Logan said thoughtfully. "And you've got an Egyptian accent. Not sure how I know that either."

Ororo examined Logan's face carefully. Then she tried again.

"Xhosa?" Logan said. "I didn't catch all of that, but it was a pretty rude thing for a lady to say. I try to avoid getting romantic with anything that has more than two legs."

Ororo paused - and then tried again.

Logan shook his head. "Don't know that one."

"It is Wakandan," Ororo told Logan.

"What did you say?" Logan asked.

"It was even ruder than what I said to you in Xhosa."

Logan gave Ororo an off-center smile. Then he responded.

Ororo cocked her head. "Italian?" she guessed.

Logan nodded.

"What did you say?" Ororo asked suspiciously. There was something about the smile on Logan's face...

Logan made a two-handed gesture that described the curvaceous outline of a female form. Ororo rolled her eyes.

"Italian is good for that sort of thing," Logan said.

"Some say French is the language of love," Ororo shot back.

"Mostly it's the French who say that. And what I said didn't have much to do with love. It was more... direct. 'Fore you get mad about that, remember that you're the one who brought goats into the conversation."

Then Logan added something else.

"Chinese?" Ororo guessed.

Logan shook his head. "Vietnamese."

Then he said something that sounded similar to what he'd just said.

"That was Chinese," Logan told Ororo.

"Now you are just showing off," Ororo observed.

"You started it," Logan countered.

Ororo tried to hide a smile but failed. "True enough," she admitted.

Logan just nodded. That was the first time he'd managed to get a smile out of Ororo. Hopefully, it wouldn't be the last. He had no particular designs on her, but in his own way, Logan did like and respect her. And he hoped to correct the damage of her initial bad impression of him.

"How did you learn so many languages?" Ororo eventually asked.

Logan suddenly seemed uncomfortable. "Did a lot of traveling when I was younger. Also spent time overseas when I was a soldier. Then I got into the intelligence racket for a while. I don't remember all of the details."

Ororo had noticed something interesting in how Logan was talking to her. Logan usually sounded rough and ill-educated - speaking in word fragments and broken sentences. But now he was being more precise.

Well... it was reasonable to say that Proper North American English and Roughneck North American English were two distinct dialects. And Logan obviously had a knack for languages.

"Why don't you remember?" Ororo asked. "Were you injured?"

Logan nodded slowly. "Yeah, you could say that."

Ororo hesitated. Actually, she'd been surprised to find herself enjoying the banter with Logan, but they were clearly wandering into something that he was finding difficult to discuss.

It occurred to Ororo that there were some additional questions that she could ask, but she decided not to go any further.

"You must have spent a lot of time traveling up and down Africa," Logan said suddenly. It was an obvious effort to move the conversation away from himself.

And suddenly Ororo was the one who was uncomfortable. "I grew up in Cairo. Then I eventually decided to go to Kenya - that was my mother's homeland. On the way, I met a Wakandan and he taught me his language. In Kenya, I met people from many parts of the world."

"Huh," Logan said thoughtfully. "So you learned English there?"

Ororo paused before replying. She didn't want to lie, but there were things about her past she preferred not to discuss.

"Why wouldn't I? Kenya used to be a British colony. English is used as a common language among the various peoples who live there."

Logan caught the fact that Ororo hadn't really answered his question. In response, he cocked his head at her - a predator's habit.

"Y'know, you've got a little bit of an American accent," Logan replied. "Not a lot, but I can hear it sometimes."

Like when Ororo said words such as 'mother' or 'home'. Logan belatedly realized that, without intending to, he'd gone too far. Something was bothering Ororo. He could literally smell her increasing unease.

Ororo was still considering her response when Sean suddenly spoke up. "If you two are done flirting, I'd like to get some sleep."

Sean was leaning back in his seat. His open book was perched on his face in an effort to block the cockpit lights.

"We weren't flirting," Ororo informed Sean firmly. Logan found himself wondering if the Irishman was actually providing them with a chance to gracefully end their suddenly uncomfortable conversation. That struck Logan as the kind of thing Sean would do.

Sean snorted - or perhaps it was actually just a snore.

Not looking at each other, Logan and Ororo fell silent. The dull roar of the engines became the dominant sound in the Blackbird.

As he'd done so many times, Logan probed around the blind spots in his memory. As usual, nothing revealed itself. And Logan wondered if that was good or bad. Sometimes he had dreams - nightmares, actually - about other times and places. He was performing missions, most of which involved killing people.

Ororo stared straight ahead, carefully taking slow and measured breaths. The interior of the Blackbird had become too small for her. She tried not to think about the past. About a massive weight of wreckage and debris looming over her - threatening to collapse at any moment. She tried not to remember her mother's shattered body, twisted and torn beside her.

There was an irony in where the two of them found themselves. Logan couldn't remember much of his past, but Ororo remembered hers all too well.

The two of them were silent throughout the rest of the flight.

Silence was good. Silence meant their secrets were safe.

At least for now.


End file.
